@mayor.nyc.gov This is what we live with when developers like Empire Management build units into the cellars of their buildings in defiance of DOB certificates of occupancy.
All the while not paying taxes for decades on 25+ buildings in Brooklyn. 421a on illegal conversions is fraud for million$.
![housing activists in Philedelphia [sic] first stumbled across the strangely-worded theory called "spatial deconcentration."
. . . housing leaders had fought their campaign [against efforts to "depopulate Philedelphia [sic] of its minority neighborhoods"]. . . under the assumption that their struggle against land speculators and government bureacracy [sic] had an economic base. . . . they were entirely wrong. . . . instead of being economic, the manifest crises that plague inner-city minorities are founded in a problem of control. The so-called "gentrification" of the inner-cities, the lack of rehabilitation financing for inner-city families, the massive demolition projects which have transformed once-stable neighborhoods into vast wastelands, the diminishing inner-city services, such as recreation, health care, education, jobs and job-training, sanitation, etc. . . are all rooted it [sic] an apparent bone-chilling fear that inner-city minorities are uncontrollable.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6gprv7kc6woh7lawl63koxns/bafkreidxy2x6io3s7bf6ndvtppr7y5gzddtrferp6jtju3q5kxkqopkrpe)
![Now there are two "functions" in a democracy: The specialized class, the responsible men, carry out the executive function, which means they do the thinking and planning and understand the common interests. Then, there is the bewildered herd, and they have a function in democracy too. Their function in a democracy, [Lippmann] said, is to be "spectators," not participants in action. But they have more of a function r than that, because it’s a democracy. Occasionally they are allowed to lend their weight to one or another member of the specialized class.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6gprv7kc6woh7lawl63koxns/bafkreihs4dybxro57vx7zppp5wvj733yozntdgv6bf6bv52ahwiw4dcjru)
